(Because I'm a woman and I've learned from experience that men assume I don't know what I'm talking about if I don't) https://twitter.com/muslimrumsprnga/status/1246960630013272064

It's always astonishing to me that people act like this is a gotcha.

My replies for the past month have been 50% dirtbag left dudes telling me I'm a cr*zy dilettante.

Like, of course I'm going to try to head that off in threads that I know they're going to look to unravel.

I was raised to let my accomplishments speak for themselves, and in healthy organizing environments you don't have to lead with your resume to head off people gearing up to tell you your lived experience doesn't count or matter.

But, Very Online Leftism isn't a healthy organizing environment.

It isn't healthy, and it's really more of a hot take chamber than an organizing environment anyway.

We should absolutely be striving every day to move our organizing environments and our culture to a place where women and other oppressed people don't need to present a resume in order to be heard.

It's also profoundly unhelpful to come at each other for tactically presenting that resume in hopes of mitigating dismissal, minimization, and harassment.

Also: in many organizing traditions, "credentialing" is an established step in introductory relationship building.

The idea is, explaining to a new person how you are in trusted relationship with people and institutions they trust jump-starts trust-building with this new person.

Resume presentation isn't deep credentialing, but it does give folks a sense of where you've been, how you relate to movement work they've seen, and how you fit in to the movement as a whole.

For folks wondering what your agenda is, it's helpful background info.

In healthy movement, we spend a lot less time introducing ourselves with our resume and a lot more time introducing ourselves with the stories of what experiences shaped our lives and brought us to movement space.

In fact, one of the ways I evaluate a new organizing space is by coming in without putting forward my resume and seeing how the folks in the room who don't know my background treat me.

(This is one reason why I love @PPF_PA and their work, they walk the walk on this)

The fact remains, though: this is not a healthy movement environment.

It is not a movement environment, period.

Those of us who have brave conversations here end up targeted and harassed, and it's un-useful and unkind to mock attempts to mitigate that dynamic.

I don't really expect this to change the mind of folks who are willing to enable the misogyny of the dirtbags.

Once someone has made the choice to side with misogyny, appeals to feminism aren't really likely to change their mind.

But, I think it's really important for other folks, especially young women, to hear that there is nothing wrong with leading with your accomplishments when you're in hostile environment with harassers eager to discredit you.

It's self-defense, not bragging.

The end!